The Lord of the Rings Online Community Q&A #6

Warcry has compiled another list of community questions for The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar, though this week they present them as an interview in article format.

With where everyone can play sorted out, Turbine has also had to shift focus to the rules and regulations of what goes on once they’re in there. Anderson and Turbine have always been vocal opponents of gold farming operations like IGE. He noted that for Lord of the Rings Online the company’s stance is the same as it has always been: they don’t support it, they encourage players not to do it and it provides them with massive customer service headaches when it happens.

While the focus is on catching the sellers, rather than the buyers, Anderson repeatedly tried to underline his problems with regular people making smaller one to one deals.

“It’s an inherently risky transaction,” Anderson explained. For example, if a player sells their account to another player, the original player can easily just call Turbine, claim their account was stolen and Turbine must always side with the original owner. They cannot investigate whether a transaction was really made. The entire system has the potential for abuse and even player fraud. He added that while they are not actively hunting people who make these one to one transactions, they will ban those who they come across.